托福阅读机经背景科学家研究艾滋病疫苗取得新进展.docxVIP

智课网TOEFL备考资料 托福阅读机经背景：科学家研究艾滋病疫苗取得新进展   In 2009, a study in Thailand proved for the first time that an AIDS vaccine was possible. But scientists were not sure why it offered some protection. Now they have some clues.  2009年，在泰国所做的一项研究首次证明，生产一种艾滋病疫苗是可能的。不过，当时科学家不大清楚的是，为什么这种疫苗对人体提供了一些保护。而现在，他们有了一些线索。  The Thailand study looked at a vaccine candidate called RV144. Since the results were announced, researchers have been combing through the data. What was it about this vaccine candidate that offered a protection rate of 31 percent? It was not high enough to go to market, but high enough to cause a lot of excitement for vaccine researchers.  泰国的这项研究考察了一种叫做RV144的候选疫苗。自从宣布研究结果以来，研究人员一直在仔细搜寻相关数据。为什么这种候选疫苗能提供31%的保护率呢?虽然这个比率还没有高到可以让这种候选疫苗进入市场的程度，但它却足以令那些疫苗研究人员兴奋不已。  “Once you have a vaccine that works, the next step in terms of the evolution of the vaccine is to try to first understand why it worked, with an idea that if we find out specifically what lab tests seem to correspond with protection we can design a new set of vaccines that might provide better protection,” said Col. Jerome Kim, senior author of a new follow-up study on RV144.  关于RV144的一项新的后续研究报告的资深作者杰罗姆.金上校说：“一旦有了能起作用的疫苗，研发疫苗的下一步工作就是先搞清楚这种疫苗为什么奏效。因为如果我们通过实验室的测试查明这种疫苗的某个具体特性产生了保护作用，那么我们就能设计一批新的疫苗，它们可能会提供更好的保护。”  Antibodies  Kim, a medical doctor with the U.S. Military HIV Research Program, said when the RV144 results were announced scientists thought the success might be due to antibodies. These are proteins that bind to viruses and disable them.  杰罗姆.金上校是美军艾滋病毒研究计划的医生。他说，当RV144的结果被宣布时，科学家都认为这一成功可能是由于它产生的抗体。这些抗体由蛋白质构成，它们对病毒视而不见，而且使病毒失效。  “But we didn’t really know,” he said, “and so we looked very, very broadly at a number of different immune responses. And looking very broadly then allowed us to down-select – to pick out only those things which were the most important. Because that statistically gives us the greatest ability to say